Paul McGuinness, the manager of U2, says that the honesty box format that Radiohead used to release their latest album 'In Rainbows' wasn't entirely successful.

McGuinness said that the band's decision to allow people to pay what they wanted for the album last October had “to some extent backfired.”

"Even though it was available on their own website for no money at all, if that was what you preferred to pay - 60 to 70 per cent of the people who downloaded the record stole it anyway even though it was available for free,” he said.

U2 are currently recording their new studio album, but, speaking to BBC 6Music, McGuinness said that they had no plans to follow Radiohead's example.

"There will be events around the release of the album but for U2 physical sales are still an enormous part of our business and we still sell a lot of actual CDs.

"We will obviously work with whatever technology is available to make the release of the new record as interesting as possible,” McGuinness added.

U2's as-yet-untitled record is expected this October.

(by Jason Gregory)